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May 20, 2011

Red Sox + Cubs = The End Of The World

That's great
It starts with an earthquake ...

In the dark ages, before October 2004, a common joke was that if the Red Sox and Cubs ever met in the World Series, neither team would win. The two clubs, whose championship droughts had lasted so long people began thinking supernatural forces were hard at work denying them baseball's ultimate prize, would meet and play out the series to the very end - Game 7, tied, in extra innings - and just as one of these sad-sack franchises was about to actually be crowned the champions of baseball ... the world would come to an end.

Boston's 2004 and 2007 World Series championships ended that scenario (though in a way, that old world did end), and while the Cubs have not won a pennant in 66 years, the two franchises have played meaningful games against each other. In June 2005, they playedthreegames in Wrigley Field. And this weekend, they meet for three games at Fenway Park.

But guess what is going to happen right before Saturday's game?

Judgment Day!

Harold Camping, a Christian evangelist and co-founder and president of Family Radio, has been preaching that Judgment Day will arrive shortly before 6 PM on Saturday, May 21, when a series of unprecedentedly large earthquakes will shock the globe.

It is absolutely going to happen. ... There is no possibility that it will not happen, because all of our information comes from the Bible.

In the same way people greeted the dawning of the year 2000 time zone by time zone as a new day began around the globe, the apocalypse/rapture will begin in New Zealand and move eastward.

According to Camping, May 21, 2011 is exactly 7,000 years since the worldwide flood of Noah's time. If you are curious about the math, you can click here and look through "We Are Almost There!"

Of the various doomsday predictions that come and go, this one has received a lot of press. Perhaps it's because Camping's followers have done a remarkable job of buying billboards and bus shelter ads (some believers have spent their life savings), and driving around in cars and trucks like the one above; or maybe the shit really is going to hit the fan this weekend.

Gunther von Harringa, a spokesman for Camping and Family Radio, says: "God has exhausted his patience with the world." (I can't say that I blame him.) After five months of torment, misery, and friggin' anarchy, the earth and universe will be destroyed on October 21.

In about 1972, my mom got into Jehovah's Witnesses, from her sister. I was 9. Thinking back, I don't recall a fuss, but the JW organization was saying that 1975 would be the end. Afterwards, they backtracked and said people were wrong to have put so much hope in 1975 and don't you know that no one knows the hour or the day, etc., deftly ignoring the very clear messages they had been sending about the fall of 1975 for more than a decade, in magazines, books, and at conventions. Plus, it was just the latest in a long line of predictions the organization had made, including, but not limited to, 1874, 1914, 1918, 1925 and 1975.

One guy I knew (who had two kids about my age) sold his house/farm to have $$ so he could devote himself full-time to spreading the word as the end drew near. And yet he remained undeterred after nothing happened. As I noted in the post, it has been reported that several people have done the same thing in this case.